Woman who sued Walmart over arrest awarded $2.1M

An Alabama woman who sued Walmart, contending that she was falsely arrested on a shoplifting charge and that the ordeal had damaged her reputation, was awarded $2.1 million in punitive damages by a jury in Mobile County this week.

Recounting the episode, the woman, Lesleigh Nurse, said that she had just finished using a self-service checkout kiosk at the Walmart in

Semmes, Alabama, on Nov. 27, 2016, when the store’s employees accused her of not paying for some groceries that totaled $48.

Despite her efforts to explain that her husband had paid the full amount of $122 with his debit card, Nurse said, she was held in a backroom at the store until a sheriff’s deputy arrived and told her that she would need to monitor the sheriff’s website for a warrant for her arrest.

Nurse, 36, said that the warrant charging her with shoplifting was issued 10 days later. She said she then turned herself in at the county jail in Mobile, Alabama, where she remained for about four hours until she was released on bond. Semmes, where Nurse lives, is about 15 miles northwest of Mobile.

The shoplifting charge was dropped in March 2017 when the store’s asset protection specialist failed to show up to court, but Nurse said that she continued to receive letters from Walmart threatening to sue her if she didn’t pay $200.

“It was a nightmare,” Nurse said. “It was an entrapment. That’s what it felt like.”

The jury found Walmart liable for abuse of process — bringing a malicious legal proceeding against someone that is intended to harass them.

But on Nurse’s claims that she was falsely arrested, imprisoned, maliciously prosecuted and slandered, the jurors sided with the retail giant.